Africa’s mobile internet problem is no longer only whether a network reaches people. Increasingly, it is whether they can afford the phone needed to use it.
Across the continent, operators have spent years building towers, laying fibre and expanding 3G and 4G coverage. The networks are there. In Senegal, 4G reaches about 97% of the population; in Uganda, 98%; and in Nigeria, more than 80%. Yet millions of people living under those networks remain offline—not because there is no signal, but because getting online still costs too much.
“Africa has built the networks,” Caroline Mbugua, a senior official at the GSMA, the mobile industry association, said in an interview with TechCabal. “But not enough people can afford to use them.”
The challenge is no longer simply whether a community can access a signal. It is whether people can afford an internet-capable phone, pay for data, acquire the skills needed to use digital services and find sufficient value online to justify the cost.
Originally published by TechCabal.